


Take This To Heart

by sayhitoforever



Series: In Every Universe [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Because I can, DGCU?, Doctor!Grimm, M/M, Writer!Ichigo, because we living our best trope life, doctor grimm cinematic universe?, doctor sexyverse, i said what i said, meddling per usual, p i n i n g, the classic break up, yoruichi at her best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayhitoforever/pseuds/sayhitoforever
Summary: Maybe it's enough that he ever laid here. Maybe it's enough that you were here together. Maybe it's enough that you ever got to love him.Maybe.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: In Every Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832818
Comments: 17
Kudos: 112





	Take This To Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos fuel the dumpster fire that I am. Thanks for reading! 🖤

  
Grimmjow takes a swig of his cranberry juice which he swears has been spiked with vodka though he has no proof and stares up at Yoruichi as she shoves an entire bruschetta crostini into her mouth in one go, her other well-manicured hand clutching her nigh empty wine glass.

“I’m so glad you could make it!” she says between chews, and only literal years of practice help Grimmjow to decipher what she’s said. She flashes a kilowatt smile with bulging cheeks at someone who jostles her before turning her attention back down to Grimmjow.

He hasn’t even taken his jacket off yet, afraid to throw it somewhere and lose it. There had to be no less than fifty or more people packed into her new house, food around every corner, drinks in every hand, soft music and boisterous laughter. A celebratory housewarming party befitting of someone as eccentric and sociable as Yoruichi. The new house is all vaulted, cathedral ceilings, the walls a stark white but already hung with stunning art and elaborate metalwork pieces that could only be gifts from a one Kisuke Urahara. It almost reminds Grimmjow of the Shihouin estate of their youth, all the pristine white and expensive shit, but he knows better than to make that comment.

“And miss you leveling up in your bachelorette life? I would never,” he deadpans. Grimmjow tries to readjust where he’s sitting on the arm of Yoruichi’s living room couch, all other proper seats taken, but there’s no saving his left ass cheek at this point.

Her beautiful face twists into a scowl as she throws back the last of her wine. “I know you’re only here because you’re on-call tonight and the hospital is a nine minute drive from here.”

On instinct, Grimmjow’s hand strays down to pull his pager from his jeans to check it. “It’s like you planned it,” he comments blithely, giving her a look over the rim of his cup that he knows she’s full of shit as he pockets his pager again. No pings yet, and Grimmjow didn’t even dare to think the Q-word at almost nine on a Friday night.

“My lips are sealed, Dr. Jaegerjaquez,” she says slyly as the front door opens up for the umpteenth time that night, and a small cheer of greetings erupts from the people crowded around the door. From his vantage point, Grimmjow can see mostly backs and a few heads and some seriously fucked up liver sabotage happening, so he pays it no mind. “It’s not a crime to wanna see your best friend more than once a month, right?”

He leans forward to set his empty glass on the already cluttered coffee table before giving Yoruichi a withering look. “You don’t honestly fucking expect me to believe that y—” he cuts himself off, eyes widening and nostrils flaring as he breathes in deeply. That cologne…

“Fucking _christ,_ ” he curses, gaze swinging wildly to the mass of bodies at the front door that haven’t parted to let the most recent arrivals through yet. He can’t see _anything,_ but he _knows._

Grimmjow all but vaults the couch, somersaulting over the back of it to the carpeted floor, pressing his spine flat to the couch’s. On his wrist, his watch starts buzzing repeatedly to let him know his heartrate has gone up too fast and he grits his teeth. Grimmjow feels lightheaded and it has nothing to do with the sudden change in his equilibrium. He tries to listen for voices by the front door, but his heart is hammering so hard he can feel it in his temples. Yoruichi’s legs come into his periphery and he damn near stares up her dress from the angle on the floor.

“Surely this kind of behavior is unbecoming of Karakura General’s Trauma Director,” she comments blithely and a little too loudly. Grimmjow’s neck cricks as it snaps up to give her a murderous, scandalized glare. And then he damn near pulls her legs out from under her as he yanks her down to his level. “Ow, bitch!”

“What the _fuck,_ Yoruichi?” he hisses, gripping her wrist so she can’t squirm away, searching her hazel eyes for an answer he’s going to like, knowing he’ll never find or get one.

“What?!” she whispers back fiercely, flicking the tip of his nose faster than he can swat her hand away. “Was I just supposed to pick one of you over the other like some weird child of divorced parents?”

“ _Yes,_ you traitor. Every kid does it.” His watch has stopped giving his wrist a massage, but he knows it’s a short-lived reprieve.

Yoruichi heaves a sigh that calls him a dramatic asshole in every unspoken way she knows how. “You _seriously_ need to… fix your shit. This is getting ridiculous. It’s been five months already.”

“My shit is in perfect order, thank you,” he snaps back and dares to sit up a little straighter and peer over the back of the couch towards the front door.

Grimmjow can still smell it, warm and rich and familiar, bringing with it a rush of a thousand days and dates and nights wrapped up so tightly in each other that it got hard to tell where he began and ended. Five years, five of the best years, weighed down in the end by big ambitions and life goals following two completely parallel paths. It had been Grimmjow’s worst fear, still was, to be an incomplete story, a book with the end pages ripped out. To know he was always going to love him, but couldn’t ask him to stay. How could it have ever been fair? Grimmjow’s insane hours and the stress of holding a life in his hands on most nights, coming home to crawl into bed, trying to leave all that emotional baggage at the door where it belonged and failing sometimes. Grand dreams to inspire others, to share his stories, to write, only to end up in love with someone who had put his work and life’s passion above everything and everyone else long before they’d ever even met. Only to have it all fall apart.

They hadn’t spoken in nearly five months since they’d broken things off, not even an accidental phone call or a stray text message. Cold turkey quits. Grimmjow still feels like he’s in withdrawal.

_“He wrote a new book. A bestseller too, isn’t that rad? Have you read it?” Subtle as a gun she was, always._

_Best not to rise to her bait when he knew it was a fight he couldn’t hope to win. “No, I haven’t.”_

_A disappointed cluck of her tongue, a roll of her pretty eyes. “You’ve gotta go get a copy. I pre-ordered it, ya know, because I just knew all the bookstores here were gonna sell out fast. It’s about this—”_

_“Don’t!” So close, too close, to getting pulled into the fantasy, back into the memories. A head of wild orange hair illuminated in the white of a laptop screen, notebooks with pens tucked in them piled and stashed all over the place. Dark circles but bright eyes, file it away, compartmentalize it, bury it. “Don’t— don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.”_

“I can’t be here,” Grimmjow whispers and searches the heads he can see from his vantage point on the floor. No sight of orange yet. Saying his name aloud only gave a name to Grimmjow’s pain, gave it a power he was _desperately_ trying to grow away from.

“Grimmjow, no, please don’t leave. Everybody knows you two didn’t break up because you stopped loving each other, for fuck’s sake. You can be civil in the same room together,” Yoruichi pleads, stooping down to smoosh his face between her warm hands as if she could hold him there.

Her words are like getting punched in the gut, so much so that Grimmjow exhales a little shakily. Obvious, he was so _fucking obvious_ about it. Rooted in the same spot like some sort of god damn tree, even five months later. The yearning like a fishhook in his cheek, yanking him along no matter how hard he thrashed and struggled to pull away.

“We can go hide up in my room. You gotta see my new canopy bed.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, but he’s hardly paying attention, eyes darting all around her, searching what he can see of the kitchen. Still no orange, but his window of escape had to be narrowing with every passing second.

“I’m gonna go have a smoke and pray for a god damn car crash or something,” he mutters, reaching back to yank his hood over his head for some semblance of disguise. “House tour next time, alright?”

Yoruichi doesn’t stop him as he shoots to his feet and crosses the living room in a few long-legged strides, clearing the kitchen to the patio door he’s been eyeing like a fugitive since he parkoured over the fuckin’ couch. The mild chill of the night air feels amazing on his hot skin as he pulls the door closed behind him as quietly as possible. The change in volume is immediate, the din of chattering and laughter getting shut out, leaving Grimmjow in the quiet of nighttime. He walks along the side of the house a few paces, out of sight from all the windows at the back, and stops in a cloistered nook with a lounge chair and a burbling, stupidly boujee looking water fountain.

He fishes his cigarettes and lighter out of his back pocket and has to take a moment, tipping his head back to look at the dark sky and take a deep breath when he sees his hand is shaking. _Fucking ridiculous._ Grimmjow could hold a human heart in his usually steady hands and gently coax it back to beating, but the mere whiff of his ex-boyfriend’s cologne is enough to make them shake.

After a few tries, he manages to light his cigarette and takes a drag that he holds so long it burns. Smoke curls out of his nose and hugs the edges of his hood as he stares up at the crooked crescent of the moon. One cigarette and then he’d go, walk around the back of the house like a burglar and leave. He’d text an apology to Yoruichi and take her out to breakfast tomorrow morning once he was off call. Just one cigarette, he didn’t want to risk being jittery if the hospital needed him. He’d just go and pace the floors since home was a bit too far, and do what he always did. Throw himself into his work to turn off the parts of his brain that plagued him.

“Grimm?”

 _Conniving bitch,_ he screams internally and grips his cigarette so hard he nearly crushes it. He thinks about not turning around for a moment, acting like he isn’t the owner of that pet name, as if it doesn’t make him feel like no amount of nicotine is going to settle his nerves from hearing it. He thinks about just walking away, not turning around, nothing, just go until he reaches his car and leave.

He turns around anyway.

Standing there in a black, deep vee shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, dark jeans, and his scuffed Chucks is the bane of Grimmjow’s entire fucking existence. All collarbones and warm skin awash in half-house light, half-moonlight, mess of orange hair like a halo around his head. Brown eyes stare through him and Grimmjow tries to square his shoulders under that unwavering gaze. _Just stare at his fuckin’ shoes,_ he thinks frantically, _that’s probably the safest place to look._ He doesn’t, of course, sucked into that gaze like it has its own gravitational pull.

“Ichigo.” A jerk of the line, fishhook dug in as deep as it’s ever been. God, staring at him is like staring directly into the fucking _sun._ Those stupid, molten eyes and devilish scowl haven’t changed a bit. “How’d ya know it was me?”

The ghost of a smile, tugging one corner of his full lips up. “You think I don’t know the smell of Parliament menthols? Thought you quit?”

Grimmjow stares at the offending thing just about squashed between his fingers and frowns. “Yeah, me too.” The lightheaded feeling is back, like all his blood has rushed to his head.

“Back to blond?” Ichigo states, jerking his chin at the tuft of hair sticking out from Grimmjow’s hood.

It had been sky blue when they’d separated, the aftermath of a lost bet with his medical assistant that he’d actually ended up liking and keeping for some time. “Got tired of the cold showers.”

And the memory of who he was when it was blue, of tanned fingers running through it, pushing it into manic looking styles just for giggles. Yoruichi had laughed at him when he’d met her for lunch one day, having spent the morning in a salon having the color stripped out because he didn’t trust himself to do it right. The end result was more on the side of silvery than his natural ash blond, but he couldn’t seem to care. It had grown out and been cut at least twice since.

 _“You’re like a college girl going through her first real heartbreak and needing to dye her hair to ‘find herself again’,” she_ ’ _d laughed as she ordered a bottle of wine for the table as if it wasn’t only eleven in the morning._

_“This is my natural color and you know that, you bitch,” he’d griped, unable to deny the truth of her statement. She’d dropped it after that, pouring him an extremely generous glass when the bottle made it to the table._

“It’s— it’s _really_ good to see you,” Ichigo murmurs, shattering the agonizing silence between them, and Grimmjow wants to scream. He wants to break into a dead sprint and keep going until he crosses a city line or something, get as far away from this and all his feelings resurfacing like a reopening wound. He lights up another cigarette instead, needing something to do with at least one of his hands.

He feels as though he’s in the middle of running a marathon as Ichigo turns to look at him, all open and earnest and horrible. Like a deer staring into oncoming headlights, Grimmjow can’t look away from him. And _fuck,_ it’s good to see him too. Grimmjow takes the quickest catalog of a person he ever has: circles darker than usual, cheeks just this side of looking a little gaunt, hair just a smidge longer than usual. Standing this close, Grimmjow can count the freckles that smatter Ichigo’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose, see the flecks of liquid gold in his warm eyes. So close that Grimmjow could have leaned in and pressed a kiss to those slightly chapped lips. It makes all the lonely nights, all one hundred and sixty-four of them, _not_ that anyone was counting, shrink down to nothing for the briefest of moments. The longer Grimmjow stares though, the more it feels like he’s being gutted open with a rusty scalpel.

Anything he says in response to _that_ is going to give him away completely, so he sidesteps it like a landmine. “Congrats on the new book,” Grimmjow remarks instead, trying to instill an iota of the civility Yoruichi seems to think he has.

“Thanks,” Ichigo says, quiet and heartfelt, the incredulity barely disguised in his voice. As if he hadn’t expected Grimmjow to know. Another haze of painful silence descends for a moment as Grimmjow takes a deep drag and Ichigo shoves his hands in his pockets and sucks in an equally deep breath, a shaky one no less. “I just wanted to say—”

“You don’t have to,” Grimmjow grits out from around his cigarette, nearly biting it off at the filter. Control, it was all about control. Maintain the façade. This is what Ichigo had wanted all those months ago. And Grimmjow— he loved Ichigo enough to respect that, to honor that. Present, not past tense though. _Loves_ him. Like swallowing thorns all the fucking time.

_“It’s like I’m in love with a ghost! You don’t talk to me, you won’t even look at me some days, you’re never here, and I keep myself up at night wondering where the hell we’ve gone wrong. And I can’t think of anything and you won’t say anything!”_

It had barely been a fight, barely even an argument. It was a resignation, to a moment in both of their lives that felt like they were getting pulled in two different directions. A force too strong to fight, personal stressors too much to overcome simultaneously. Ichigo with an impending deadline burdened with sky-high expectations, Grimmjow’s schedule becoming insane during the swell of the year-end holidays. 

_“I can’t live like this. I feel like we’re suffocating each other.”_

Grimmjow had moved out the next day, taking only clothes and essential shit. He wasn’t much of a sentimental person to begin with, a lifesaver in the end really. Because it was bad enough already to have to carry around the memory of Ichigo, like the taste of blood in the back of his throat, much less having material reminders. He’d lived at Yoruichi’s for the better part of a month while she was out of the country on business before bothering to look for a new place. And while it would have been nice to have her around in the immediate aftermath, it had been for the best that he was alone.

And _now._ After nearly six months of feeling like someone had taken a Dermatome to his entire body and rubbed him down with lemon juice. After all the radio silence on both sides. After feeling numb and empty, hollowed out, _alone._ And _now_ Ichigo had something to say?

“I _want_ to. Because I’m—”

Grimmjow’s pager bleeps from the pocket of his jeans and both of them freeze. Ichigo’s eyes go a little wide, as do Grimmjow’s, as they stare at each other, Grimmjow’s cigarette burning away unsmoked between his fingers. Ichigo knows. How could he not? The infernal thing bleeping at all hours when it was Grimmjow’s turn to carry it around. It was probably the root of half their issues, Grimmjow on trauma call and getting paged at the worst times. The middle of a date night out to dinner, the movies, the grocery store, in the bedroom with Ichigo underneath him hitting dangerous high notes.

It’s an internal detonation happening in front of him in real time. Ichigo closing in, open eyes shuttering like a house battening down for a hurricane. In a matter of seconds, he’s as distant looking as Grimmjow has ever seen him, like a stranger, a mask of indifference like a perfect disguise, usually spitfire eyes ice cold and blank. 

“Have a good shift,” Ichigo says quietly, and his tone says everything he doesn’t. Reserved, sullen, resigned to the reality that hasn’t seemed to change at all. The same way he’d sounded the morning they broke up.

He doesn’t meet Grimmjow’s eyes, like he can’t bring himself to for a moment. But when he does, all the painstakingly built up barriers in Grimmjow’s chest crumble like they’re made of sand and not the imaginary brick and mortar he used to wall himself in. Ichigo reaches up, very little hesitancy in his movements now, and cups one of Grimmjow’s cheeks before leaning in and pressing a chaste kiss to the other cheek. Brief, fleeting, a goodbye in its purest form, and he’s already pulling away to leave.

Everything inside of Grimmjow seems to flatline, a ringing in his ears sounding damn near the same for a second. He doesn’t think about, doesn’t stop to consider the fall out or the consequences or what this is going to do to all of his supposedly good progress later. He reaches up and puts his hand over Ichigo’s, dropping his cigarette to the patio stone to reach up and slide his fingers into orange spikes with the other. Grimmjow reels him in and crushes their lips together, bruising in the force of it.

One of them makes a soft sound, half a whimper and half a sigh, and it’s a moment of suspension. Of the cold night air on his skin, soft hair threaded between his fingers, warm lips against his own, a smell that reminds him of the closest thing he’s ever had to a home. It’s a bubble, warm, sheltered, euphoric. And then it pops, and Ichigo is driving him back against the side of the house, hand gripping Grimmjow’s jaw as he angles his chin and kisses back like he wants to crawl inside.

Grimmjow groans when Ichigo’s hand slides from his face to the back of his skull, pushing his hood down to get a sharp grip on the hair at the nape of his neck. Pulling just enough to incite a thrill of pain that skitters down his spine like the press of fingertips, the way he always used to, the way Grimmjow liked it. He nips at Grimmjow’s bottom lip and its ingrained instinct, grabbing ahold of lean hips tightly and heaving all their momentum to the side, crowding Ichigo against the stucco of the house. Clutching the back of his head like a lifeline, Grimmjow pulls them flush, using the few inches he has on Ichigo to crane his head back and kiss him harder. He tastes like spent moonlight and his shitty cinnamon gum, like _Ichigo_ , and Grimmjow’s chest aches so bad it feels like someone’s cracked his sternum open.

Grimmjow’s pager bleeps again and Ichigo wrenches away from him like he’s been burned. He gets a hand between them and puts it flat on Grimmjow’s chest and pushes, surprisingly gentle, until he’s got him at an arm’s length distance. Both of them are breathless, staring with disbelieving eyes. Ichigo’s hand is all that stops Grimmjow from leaning into him again, the polarizer against his magnetic pull.

“I’m sorry,” Ichigo stammers out, as if he was the one that really started it, not Grimmjow. “I know you have to go. I shouldn’t—” He can’t seem to bring himself to finish his own sentence, warm hand withdrawing from Grimmjow’s chest, leaving the space between them. A singular foot that feels like an entire ocean.

And then he gives no other choice in the matter as he steps around Grimmjow and beelines for the back door, pulling it open and slipping back into the house without so much as looking back once. It’s like whiplash. Grimmjow’s hands are shaking again, horribly, when he looks down at them as if they’ve betrayed him. That’s not— he didn’t mean to— he _shouldn’t_ have— _Fuck._

Go, he needs to go. He needs to leave; he can’t be here anymore.

He makes sure to step on his still smoldering cigarette with far more violence than necessary, stamping it into oblivion. He stalks through the backyard, throwing the metal gate at the side of the house open with more force than necessary and letting it clang shut behind him. Not bothering to follow the stupidly winding path of laid stones that lead to the front sidewalk, Grimmjow stomps right through Yoruichi’s grass and across the street to where his car is parked.

There’s something balanced on the roof of his car, just above the driver’s door, and he swipes it off in a maddened haze, nearly dropping it. It’s a book, hardback, with a glossy jacket on it. It’s _Ichigo’s book_ , the most recent one, and Grimmjow just _knows_ that it’s Yoruichi’s copy because only she’s abominable enough to dog ear pages. For whatever god forsaken reason, one of the first few pages is dog eared and Grimmjow can’t seem to stop himself from cracking the book open to said page. And because she really is a conniving bitch, it’s the dedication page that she’s earmarked, plain, save for three italicized words in the center of it.

_For my soulmate._

Grimmjow stares down at it for so long without blinking that the words blur together. He closes the book slowly, and with it clutched between both his hands, he drops his forehead to the cold glass of the driver’s window with a resounding _thunk_. A conspiracy, it was a fucking conspiracy. Yoruichi and this party and inviting Ichigo knowing that Grimmjow had planned to be here tonight. Obviously telling Ichigo that Grimmjow was trying to slip out the back without being seen. Planting the book on his car, _knowing_ how it would affect him after the sabotage of sending Ichigo out after him. She’d planned the whole god damned thing.

He picks his head up slightly and thunks it down against the window again in defeat, feeling like he’s been put through the ringer in the span of thirty minutes. Yoruichi was trying to pull one over on the universe, meddling with fate again. And that’s— _fucking christ._ It’s not like Ichigo had never called Grimmjow that before over the years, _my soulmate_. It’s just another thing entirely to read it, to see it in a place where the whole world could see it, where Grimmjow hadn’t been expected to look after they’d called it quits.

Yanking the pager out of his pocket, he flips it right side up and reads the most recent message that blips across the tiny screen. ‘DISREGARD’. Grimmjow inhales an agonizingly slow breath through his nose before dropping his head against the window again. All of _that_ for _nothing._ He looks up at the house, all lit up, glowing from all the downstairs windows, warm and inviting, and everything Grimmjow can’t handle right now. He knows what the book is meant to do; drive him back into the house to find Ichigo, make amends, fall in love again like he ever fell out of it. For all her infamous cynicism, Yoruichi was a romantic at her core.

Grimmjow rips the driver’s door open, chucking the book into the backseat where it bounces and then hits the floor behind the passenger seat. His tires squeal as he pulls away from the curb sharply. He’ll go anyway, decides he’ll tell them he didn’t see the second page, only the first. And true to Yoruichi’s calculations, it takes Grimmjow all of nine minutes to make it to the hospital.

“Get out of my E.D, you mopey fuck,” the charge nurse says to him the moment he steps foot on the floor after changing into his scrubs. And Grimmjow doesn’t even have the energy to call her out, turning right back around and slinking down the hall like a dog with it’s tail between it’s legs.

He texts Yoruichi at half past three about breakfast, knowing she’ll see it when she wakes. He spends the better part of the wee hours of the morning packing gauze between the diaphragm and thoracic wall of a car crash patient, brain off, hands busy, the taste of cinnamon still on his tongue.

**~**

_‘Running late. Sorry. Be there in 10,’_ Grimmjow texts out as he throws all his shit in the passenger seat. A shower would be nice, but it was well enough that he’d changed his scrubs before leaving, in no mood to yank yesterday’s jeans back on.

 _‘In a booth in the back corner. Don’t speed!’_ is what he gets back in response.

Not only is the parking lot of Yoruichi’s favorite breakfast place absolutely packed, but it’s, of fucking course, full of corner booths like some kind of maze. The first three booths within his immediate line of sight as he enters do not have a purple haired she-devil seated at them.

‘ _WHICH corner?’_ he texts out furiously as he walks past the host stand, jerking his head up in time not to collide with a waitress carrying a whole tray of mimosas.

And sitting in a corner booth by a window that overlooks the outdoor patio is Ichigo, all riotous orange hair and a white, stupidly snuggly looking cable knit sweater on. He’s dumping an unholy amount of cream into the coffee mug in front of him, spoon poised and ready in his other hand. Grimmjow’s guts open like a trapdoor, everything in him sinking all the way to his toes. The only thing that stops him from turning on his heel and bolting is Ichigo picking that precise moment to look up. And judging by the naked astonishment on his face, Grimmjow isn’t who he’s expecting to see either.

‘ _Ur a fucking DEAD WOMAN.’_ he texts without looking down, immediately receiving a whole row of smirking emojis in response.

Grimmjow feels so weirdly awkward in his black scrubs, the slightly too long pantlegs of them that he keeps stepping on with his worn-out Nikes, unfortunately covering his favorite socks. Horrendously stripped red and yellow and black monstrosities that read ‘Ringmaster of the Shitshow’ across the ankles, last year’s Christmas gift from his favorite scrub tech. His hospital credentials are still clipped to the V of his shirt, black coat still on, feeling underdressed for a place as upscale as this. He approaches the table slowly, stopping to let a dude with an armful of dirty plates by, acutely aware that Ichigo was still staring.

“Either we’re both stupid as shit, or she really is that much smarter than everybody,” Ichigo says with a sigh, setting his coffee mug down as Grimmjow hovers at the edge of the table, fiddling with his car keys in his coat pocket.

“Feel like I have ‘stupid’ tattooed on my forehead at this point,” Grimmjow grumbles as he slides into the booth with a huff, too tired to fight Yoruichi’s meddling any longer, or the way Ichigo’s tanned skin practically glows against the white of his sweater.

A wry smile plucks at Ichigo’s lips as he shoves his dinky coffee cup across the table to Grimmjow, who picks it up without thinking about it, and downs half of it in one swig, grimacing around the ratio of milk to actual caffeine. He’s already passing it back when he realizes what he’s done, and stops short. _What the absolute fuck?_ God, those were ingrained habits he should have kicked by now, after six shitty months. They’re both saved from the initial awkward commentary on those actions by the waitress dropping by to pour Grimmjow his own cup and placing a glass of ice water before him with a warm smile. Grimmjow yanks a fork out from the rolled napkin on his side and fishes out as many ice cubes he can get in one go before dumping them in his mug and slugging the coffee down like a dying man. All while Ichigo watches on in quiet amusement.

“You’re literally the only person I know who drinks black coffee unironically.”

“That’s just _milk_ that you’ve put coffee in for color,” he nearly gurgles, pointing down at Ichigo’s offensive concoction. He sets his empty cup back on the table and leans back a little, giving Ichigo a slow onceover. He looks about as tired as Grimmjow feels, and he wonders if Ichigo had a sleepless night too. “I take it she’s not going to join us then.”

“Don’t think so,” Ichigo says with a shake of his head and leans back himself as the waitress pops up again to refill their mugs. She seems to read the tension between them immediately, and glances briefly at the menus still sitting untouched at the edge of the table, and leaves with a cursory smile. Grimmjow forks more ice cubes into his piping hot coffee before lifting it to his mouth again.

“I want to take it back,” Ichigo declares suddenly, and a dreadful swoop goes through Grimmjow’s chest as he stares over the lip of his mug. “I’m not sorry for kissing you. Not at all.”

Grimmjow swallows down his still too hot coffee and it burns from tongue to stomach, a scorching path of heat that settles in his guts. He regards Ichigo quietly, gaze sweeping over his scrunched brow, tired eyes, and clenched jaw. Tensed, like he’s already prepared for whatever Grimmjow’s gonna say.

“Okay…” Grimmjow concedes slowly. There has to be more than that. That apology damn near counts for nothing. Grimmjow isn’t fucking sorry either, considering he’s the one at fault. Maybe he should say that. Or maybe he really should be sorry.

“I am sorry for the way I reacted. I shouldn’t have left you like that last night,” Ichigo finishes, and Grimmjow watches him haul in a fortifying breath, steeling himself for what he says next. “Or— or six months ago.”

The whole of the restaurant behind him has melted away into white noise and it’s just Ichigo and his haunted looking eyes and Grimmjow’s pulse thudding heavily in his throat. “Why?” he asks, voice rasping pathetically around the word.

Ichigo hangs his head a little and Grimmjow hates the way he wants to reach across and grab the hand lying clenched atop the table. “It was the coward’s way out, of me thinking you could do better, have someone more patient than me, who will be more understanding than I was of the stress you’re always under. Feeling like I wasn’t enough. I was just… selling you my own inadequacies and I’m sorry. That’s— what I wanted to say last night, that I’m sorry.”

“This is what I do,” Grimmjow states, feeling horribly out of his depth and hating every passing second of it. He could talk a surgical resident through the steps of an appendectomy easily, but verbalizing emotions he’s been trying to smother for half a year? Apparently impossible. “It’s— it’s _everything_ to me.”

“I know that,” Ichigo insists with painful sincerity, leaning forward until the lip of the table is pressed to his chest. “I’ve always known that. I don’t— I don’t want you to _change_ , Grimmjow. I don’t want you to be anyone else. I want you to be _you._ The same blunt asshole I fell in love with.”

“Then, _why now_?” That’s really the question of all questions. The deed was already done but why, if Ichigo regretted it, had he waited so long to say so? To say _anything_ at all?

Ichigo lets out a frustrated huff, withdrawing that tempting hand to card it through his hair, scrubbing it down his exhausted face. “Because I _miss you._ Because I hear a stupid joke and I turn to say it to you and you aren’t there anymore. Because I realized the other day that I’d forgotten what your laugh sounded like. Because I’m tired of sleeping _alone_ in _our_ bed _._ ”

Grimmjow sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. He’d forgotten how good with words Ichigo was, after five months of not having a single conversation, of not even hearing his voice. It was his job after all, his passion, to weave worlds and stories out of words. He always seemed to know the right thing to say. And Grimmjow, he missed Ichigo like an amputated limb. Still reached across the bed most nights like he expected all that warm skin to be just within reach. Pacing circles on nights off, fielding texts from Yoruichi when he knew he was in no mood to be around people, even her. Lonely even when the room was full of people. Work was his only distraction from all the inner turmoil eating away at him.

But so many of his days were spent just wanting to go back, to wake up next Ichigo again like none of this shit ever happened. It couldn’t be the same though. Falling back into old habits he’d been working to shake would only beget the same problems as before. And if Ichigo felt strong enough to admit his faults to Grimmjow, then he had to make it mutual, right? That’s what well-adjusted adults did, wasn’t it? Met halfway?

“I don’t do clinics anymore,” he blurts out, and Ichigo stares, eyes wide with surprise. “Just my regular shifts and my rotating on-call shifts. And with the new trauma center they just opened in the town over, my cases have gone down a lot.”

“Wh-what did Nel have to say to that?” Ichigo stutters, and there’s a rekindling in the depths of his earthen eyes that’s nothing but gasoline on the low-burning fire in Grimmjow’s own chest.

Nelliel, his medical assistant of almost four years, had cried, kicked him viciously in the left shin, and then took him out to dinner the same night. Such as their professional and friendly relationship was. “She wasn’t thrilled.”

They lapse into silence for a few heartbeats. It’s slow, the grin that splits Ichigo’s face, slow like a sunset and twice as radiant. And he’s too clever for his own good, because he has to realize what Grimmjow is doing, meeting him in the middle. And because he’s a cheeky bastard— _god,_ how Grimmjow has missed even _that_ about him— he slides one foot forward until his leg is situated between both of Grimmjow’s calves. The warmth that crashes down on him at the gesture makes his skin prickle beneath his scrubs, the restaurant suddenly too hot for his coat. Grimmjow reaches for his coffee cup again, needing something to do with his hands that isn’t reaching across the table to grab two fistfuls of Ichigo’s stupidly nice sweater and hauling him into his lap, restaurant full of people be damned.

“I ain’t gonna shake your hand and reintroduce myself,” Grimmjow says, face feeling a little hot and growing even hotter when Ichigo tosses his head back and laughs.

“I’m gonna text Yoruichi that you saw me and ran.”

“Fuckin’ _do it_ ,” Grimmjow groans, though he’s the farthest from feeling genuinely pissed off right now. “Punishment for being the universe’s number one meddling bitch.”

Ichigo waggles his eyebrows suggestively and Grimmjow has to grip his coffee cup like he’s trying to choke it out. “How long do you think we could string her along?” Ichigo asks conspiratorially.

The twinkle of mischief in his warm eyes makes everything inside of Grimmjow lurch to a sudden stop before taking off again at lightspeed. He clamps Ichigo’s leg between his knees and wraps one foot around the ankle he’s trapped. The answering bloom of pink across Ichigo’s nose and cheekbones, enough to make his freckles stand out as Grimmjow grins crookedly at him, feels like the purest victory.

“As long as you want.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Twitter acting a fool on the regular [here](https://mobile.twitter.com/sayhitoforeverr)  
> Join the GrimmIchi Discord [here!](https://discord.gg/u4TGnAkv)


End file.
